Last week one of the greatest of all portrait photographers had a one-man exhibition at Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art. To modern camera fans the 40-odd sepia-colored pictures in this exhibition looked like the rich-toned etchings of an old master.
Most of them were portraits of people with strong, lined faces, gnarled hands, who dressed in prim, sober costumes. Some depicted demure-looking children. All of them were taken nearly a hundred years ago. The photographer who had made them had died in his native Scotland in 1870 without ever having seen a modern film or darkroom. But he had caught the dour,...